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Sunday, March 4, 2012

And after you're done fighting for freedom of speech in Morocco, why not head to Spain and eat off of an active volcano?

Coming off Treehugger, who themselves got it from Oddity Central, a site I'm definitely going to have to look further into, we're today told about El Diablo Restaurant on Lanzarote, part of the Canary Islands, sitting due west of Morocco, towards the border with Western Sahara.

A dormant volcano doesn't mean a dead volcano. The classification of volcanoes into active, dormant and extinct is actually a bit messy, scientifically speaking, though generally if a volcano has erupted in the last 10,000 years, it's considered active, and you're not extinct until you've lost your lava supply.

El Diablo Restaurant sits in Timanfaya National Park, where the Wikipedia page notes eruptions between 1730-36, meaning we're well within the boundaries of being an active volcano (though Treehugger labels it dormant). There are no eruptions thought to be coming in the near future or else nobody would have built a restaurant there.

Okay, well, maybe an artist would. Namely, artist/architect Cesar Manrique, who started the restaurant in 1970, four years before the park was established. What he did was, he took a spot where volcanic heat seeps up from the ground- it gets to 400 degrees Celsius (752 degrees Fahrenheit) 6 meters underground- and then he built a grill right on top of it, and then built a restaurant around the grill. The photos supplied indicate you can walk right up to the grill and have a look for yourself.

Manrique picked a good spot. Right next door is the Islote de Hilario, a geyser which has the most underground heat in the park. Park attendants pour water in the hole to provoke it for the tourists.

Presumably, your wine has not been down that hole prior to serving. Hopefully.